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Music and the Movement: Understanding Occupy Wall Street

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Music and the Movement: Understanding Occupy Wall Street Butler University Digital Commons @ Butler University Graduate Thesis Collection Graduate Scholarship 2017 Music and the Movement: Understanding Occupy Wall Street Benjamin Scott Holbrook Butler University Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.butler.edu/grtheses Part of the Music Commons Recommended Citation Holbrook, Benjamin Scott, "Music and the Movement: Understanding Occupy Wall Street" (2017). Graduate Thesis Collection. 489. https://digitalcommons.butler.edu/grtheses/489 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate Scholarship at Digital Commons @ Butler University. It has been accepted for inclusion in Graduate Thesis Collection by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ Butler University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Acknowledgements I would like to thank my advisor, Dr. Nicholas Johnson, for years of guidance in entering this field. From switching the paper topic from Dowland, to murder balladry, and finally to protest movements and Occupy, his guidance and direction have allowed me to find my true interests and hone my voice in expressing my ideas. Recognition is also due to Dr. Clare Carrasco, for her knowledge, guidance, and keen eye for editing. I would like to extend my gratitude to the members of my committee, Dr. Andrew Farina and Dr. Jeffrey Gillespie. A special thank you to all those whose support and friendship have helped me see this project through to its end and their encouragement to carry on when I never wanted to type the word “occupy” again. ii Abstract On September 17, 2011, protestors set up camp in Zuccotti Park in New York’s financial district, initiating a 59-day social and political movement known as Occupy Wall Street. Writing about the protest, James C. McKinley Jr. of the New York Times declared that the movement “lacks a melody” compared with protest movements of the previous century. Despite the common perception that little music accompanied the movement, organizers released Occupy This Album: 99 Songs for the 99%, a collection of songs connected with, written for, or written about the Occupy Wall Street movement. This thesis investigates the place of Occupy Wall Street in society through its musicking and through Occupy This Album: 99 Songs or the 99%. Building upon the sociomusicological work of R. Serge Denisoff and the work of Garth S. Jowett and Victoria O’Donnell, I propose a framework for a categorization of songs through their lyrical content and apply it to the music found on Occupy This Album. Then, using this framework, I determine the potential “progressiveness” of Occupy Wall Street through the modernization theory of Talcott Parsons. I contend that Occupy this Album: 99 Songs for the 99% shows Occupy Wall Street to be a modernizing movement as indicated through its large output of propaganda songs, showing a commitment to communication of diverse knowledge and ideologies and a generalization of value sets. This analysis and its conclusion situate Occupy Wall Street in society through its musical output rather than through its cultural and political effects. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgments Abstract I. Introduction………………………………………….…………1 II. Musicking and the Movement…………….…………………...6 III. Methodology: A Framework for the Analysis of Sociopolitical Songs……………………………………………………….…24 IV. Analysis: Occupy This Album: 99 Songs for the 99%……......41 V. Conclusion….………………………………………………...61 Bibliography…….…………………………………………………...65 iv Chapter 1 Introduction On July 13, 2011, founder Kalle Lasn and senior-editor Micah White of Adbusters, a Canadian-based anti-consumerist magazine, penned an email to the roughly 70,000 subscribers of their publication.1 Attached to this email White included a new version of a meme, a ballerina poised atop Charging Bull (see Figure 1.0).2 This meme had been used in previous emails advocating for large-scale American protests akin to the Arab Spring, specifically Tahrir Square, and other European anti-austerity protests.3 However, while in previous emails this meme was often accompanied with the hashtag #occupywallstreet, in this July email the normal hashtag was replaced with “What is our one demand? Occupy Wall Street. Bring Tent.” and the date, September 17, 2011.4 With these simple instructions, the American Occupy Movement was sparked and roughly 1 Mattathias Schwartz, “Pre-Occupied,” The New Yorker, November 28, 2011, accessed April 1, 2017, http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/11/28/111128fa_fact_schwartz?currentPage=all. 2 Merriam Webster Online defines “meme” as, “an amusing or interesting item (such as a captioned picture or video) or genre of items that is spread widely online especially through social media.” In this case, the social media platform was a combination of Adbuster’s email server and Twitter for which the hashtag would be used for tagging and aggregating similar posts utilizing the same hashtag (https://www.merriam- webster.com/dictionary/meme, accessed April 7, 2017). 3 The Arab Spring or Democracy Spring refers to a series of revolutions and protest movements throughout North Africa and the Middle East that began in Tunisia following the Tunisian Revolution of December 2010 that led to the ousting of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in January 2011. Following success in Tunisia, Egyptians, numbering at times close to 50,000, began massive protests in Tahrir Square that eventually lead to the Egyptian Revolution and the overthrow of the government of Hosni Mubarak. In an update posted to the Adbuster’s site, a member of the staff rallied readers through invocation of the protests: “So, let’s learn the strategic lessons of Tahrir (nonviolence), Syntagma (tenacity), Puerta del Sol (people’s assemblies) and lay aside adherence to political parties and worn-out lefty dogmas. On September 17, let’s sow the seeds of a new culture of resistance in America that fires up a permanent democratic awakening.” Adbusters Staff, “#Occupywallstreet Update,” Adbusters, August 11, 2011, accessed May 31, 2017, http://www.adbusters.org/action/occupywallstreet/occupywallstreet-update/. 4 Schwartz, “Pre-Occupied.” The significance of Occupy occurring on Constitution Day spoke to an idea held by many members of Occupy: the government of the United States was no longer a government of, for, and by the people but rather one of, for, and by large corporations. Andrew Fleming, “Adbusters Sparks Wall Street Protest; Vancouver-based Activists Behind Street Actions in the U.S.” Vancouver Courier, September 27, 2011, accessed March 30, 2017, http://www.vancourier.com/news/adbusters- sparks-wall-street-protest-1.374299. 1 2,000 protestors marched, signs in-hand, into Manhattan’s financial district.5 This action began an occupation of Zuccotti Park that lasted from September 17 until November 15, when the New York City Police Department arrested 200 protestors and, with help from the Department of Sanitation, forced protestors to leave the “unsanitary and hazardous” conditions.6 Figure 1.0. Artwork for Occupy Wall Street from AdBusters7 5 Fleming, “Adbusters Sparks Wall Street Protest.” 6 Colleen Long and Verena Dobnik, “Zuccoti Park Eviction: Police Arrest 200 Occupy Wall Street Protestors,” The Huffington Post, November 11, 2011, last updated January 14, 2012, accessed July 2, 2017, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/15/zuccotti-park-eviction-po_n_1094306.html. 7 Image reproduced from “The poster that launched Occupy Wall Street,” accessed, April 12, 2017, https://www.micahmwhite.com/read/#/new-yorker-profile/. 2 Analyzing and understanding of the 59-day protest continues to be relevant for organizers, political scientists, and news organizations alike.8 In an interview with NPR’s Eric Westervelt in 2017, Micah White struggled with the impact of Occupy Wall Street on ground-level activism in the wake of the election of President Donald Trump. Six years after the end of Occupy Wall Street, White suggested that it had been an “instructive failure,” teaching that big street protests do not work in changing political culture.9 In another interview, White stated, “Occupy Wall Street tested out a grand theory of social change, which was basically, ‘If you can get millions of people into the streets, largely non-violent, and unified behind a central message, then change will have to happen.’ I think we spread to 82 countries. It was amazing. And it didn't work.”10 Others looking at the impact of Occupy Wall Street have interpreted it differently, seeing its fingerprint in subsequent social movements, such as Black Lives Matter, and political campaigns, specifically the campaign of Senator Bernie Sanders during the 2016 presidential election.11 One protestor visiting Zuccotti Park on the five-year anniversary of Occupy claimed its lasting influence was simply being ignored: “People won’t give us 8 Eric Westervelt, “Message to ‘Resistors’ from Occupy Co-Creator: Stop Protesting. Run for Office.” National Public Radio, March 28th, 2017, accessed April 7, 2017. http://www.npr.org/2017/03/28/520971836/message-to-resistors-from-occupy-co-creator-stop- protesting-run-for-office. 9 Ibid. 10 Eric Westervelt, “Occupy Activist Micah White, Time to Move Beyond Memes and Street Spectacles” National Public Radio, March 28, 2017, accessed April 7, 2017, http://www.npr.org/2017/03/28/520911740/occupy-activist-micah-white-time-to-move-beyond-memes- and-street-spectacles. For essays concerning the impact of Occupy Wall Street on political science, see Occupying Political Science, ed. Emily Welty et al. New York: Palgrave-MacMillan, 2013. 11 Megan Leonhardt, “The Lasting Effects of Occupy Wall Street, Five Years Later,” Time, September 16, 2016, accessed July 5, 2017, http://time.com/money/4495707/occupy-wall-street-anniversary-effects/; Olivia B. Waxman, “5 Essential Occupy Wall Street Stories” Time, September 16, 2016, accessed July 5, 2017, http://time.com/4484279/occupy-wall-street-5-years/. 3 proper credit, they think that we are dead.”12 These interpretations of Occupy’s successes or failures all look for the movement’s outside influence as a way to situate it within society after the end of the protest.
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